I've been hanging around on britmodeller for a while now, posting some stuff (and voicing my opinions!) but I've not done a WIP yet, so it's time to put that right.

In one of those sad situations that life springs on you now and then, a model friend died a couple of years ago. I disposed of his kit collection for his wife (Janet) but she asked me to build a couple of models from his collection. As Tony was a Phantom fan, Janet held onto an F-4 kit and inside the box I also found some decals.

As luck would have it, this happens to be one of my favourite anniversary schemes and in fact I'd built the 72nd version a few years ago now. That build also happened to be the last hand painted aircraft that I ever made (since then I've airbrushed) so it has some poignancy for me as well. Here's how mine turned out, not brilliant but as a 3 footer it's ok. Hopefully the 48th one will look much better.

This is going to be a straight OOB build (nothing fancy) as that's what Janet wants. I've also had a bad case of modeller's block for a long time so I'm hoping this project will help cure that.

I've never built a Hasegawa 48th Phantom, I've built plenty of Hasgeawa stuff but not one of these. It's amazing that they have the market to themselves for 48th F-4s, no-one else has the kind of the range of F-4s in 48th with engraved panel lines. But at least the kits are good quality.

The seats went together ok and I was impressed with them considering the age of the kit, I may add some straps on later. The cockpit tub had bits attached and I also glued the tanks. Later on I sprayed the seats and tub with halfords grey primer.

I then started spraying stuff that needs to be white (using Halfords cans) and screwed up ...

It took me by surprise that there were 2 sets of intakes, engraved panel line intakes had been added to the kit when it was retooled but the original ones (raised lines) were still there. Guess which ones I sprayed first?

Next problem was removing the lumps and bumps from the wings. The underside were easy, the upper lumps are quite prominent and took some fettling to remove without damaging too much of the surrounding area. You can see the lump to be removed on the left, and on the right the lump that has been removed. I would have thought it was easier to mould these lumps as addons rather than have to remove them.

Anyway, I eventually got a decent finish but I won't know more until I spray them. Bearing this kind of thing in mind, are there any other major fit/pitfalls with this kit I should know about?

Got a bit of painting done. The seats have turned out lovely, capturing the general shape quite well. I was going to add seat belts but I've decided to add the crew so there's no point.

The cockpit panels also came out really well, there's a lot of good detail there that just needs dry brushing. I painted the CRTs in dark green but then discovered that they're dark red (in the pics I came across) so I had to repaint them. Alas all of this will be lost when the canopies are closed and the crew are seated but hey, at least I know it's there

I also tackled the intakes, a common problem on F-4 kits. Periklis mentioned to be careful with them, so I was. And I have to say I've not come across a fit as good as this on any Phantom intake. There's a bit of cleaning up to do but the grey primer shows a pretty good fit. This is the first 48 hasegawa F-4 I've built and I'm impressed, it's a pity they're so expensive (for my pockets anyway) otherwise I could be tempted to buy more of them.

I also added some bits to the underside of the wing and primed the fuel tanks but they're boring so there's no point in putting a pic of that lot up

I primed the fuselage halves (Halfords primer) and glued them together, along with the cockpit. All went smoothly, the seats and joysticks have been left out making it easier to insert the crew later on. I left the fuselage to cure overnight before attaching the wings.

The big problem was always going to be the attaching the lower wing. Probably all phantom kits suffer the same problem, the front join between the wing and fuselage/intakes so I decided to glue the lower wing section before attaching the upper wings to allow me a bit of movement. That turned out to be a wise move but not for the reasons I thought.

To cut a long story short I had the option of having the intake seams lined up or the fuselage join lined up, so I went for the former as it should make life easier cleaning the joins up afterwards. The step isn't as bad as it looks, I took the photo at a certain angle to emphasize the problem.

The real surprise came when I tried the upper wings. The left wing was fine, the right wing wasn't great and there was a gap beside the fuselage.

The answer was to squeeze the lower wing up to the fuselage and insert a dollop of superglue in the gap between the undercarriage bay and the inside of the fuselage. A squirt of accelerator (and another dollop of super glue) did the job. This wouldn't have been possible if I'd glued the upper wings to the lower wings before attaching them to the fuselage so I was lucky.

I had my suspicions about the nose joint, even before Periklis had mentioned it. Normally I'd stick the 2 halves together and then onto the airframe. This time I decided to stick each half of the nose to the airframe separately. Lo and behold the fit isn't perfect, it's only a small gap (there's a similar gap underneath) so it's easily solved with a bit of filler.

That's major parts of the airframe together, now it's just a case of filler, sand, primer, filler, sand, primer etc

Some good work there Neil. Pity about the gaps, but like you say, a bit of iller and some sanding, and Bob's your uncle. I'll keep your tip about fitting the lower wing first for my Phantom builds in the future.

Not much interesting stuff to post, just the boring part of modelling ...

The nose join (at the top) needed a bit of work, Whether it was me or the kit I'm not sure but filling and sanding sorted it out. The side nose intakes also needed some filler but other than that not much tidying up was required. I sprayed yet more primer on it and then sprayed the u/c bays with halfords white primer. Normally I put the u/c on and then spray but this time I'm leaving the u/c till later so I masked off the bays with blu-tak.

I then had to start the tedious task of masking the canopy. I hate masking ... I really hate masking ...

Unfortunately this kit didn't come with the one piece canopy option so I raided my hasegawa F-4J for it. That now leaves me with 2 open canopy sets for the J so, Airfix Andy, one of them is yours if I don't screw up and use both of them

Tony's paint collection had the colours needed but they're Gunze Sangyo, which I've ony sprayed once before and that was a very long time ago. I prefer to thin acrylics with water, can you thin Gunze with water and also what's the best cleaner to use on the airbrush for Gunze?

I dont think the Egypt scheme ever had a rigid pattern and this aircraft is no exception, masking was done with tape and blu tak. I sprayed the model with Gunze Sangyo paints, which I've not used in anger before. It sprays nicely but I did learn one thing, don't thin it with water. I did and it didn't spray very well so the next coat was thinned with IPA and it went on fine. I sprayed the tanks, u/c doors, tailerons and canopy at the same time.

Me and natural metal finishes just don't go together, so I decided to try something different this time. I sprayed the rear end with metalcote matt aluminium and buffed it with cotton buds, then I gave it a coat of Klear.

I used a tin of Humbrol gunmetal (which, alas, is noweher near as dark as it used to be ) and mixed it with black oil paint to use for dry brushing. The thoery was that the oil paint would allow me to blend the mixture easier than just using enamel paints.

I think it worked to a degree (certainly better than my previous techniques) but there's still some work to be done in this area.When I get a panel wash on it, all the recessed detail that stands out as bright will be darkened and everything will be hunky dory, well that's the theory anyway.

Oops, I've just spotted that the pitot on the fin leading edge needs to be bent back to shape

The expert choice decals were a bit of a problem, they seemed to lack glue as they didn't really grip the surface that well and partly because of this there was also some silvering. The fin markings really didn't settle down well either, even with multiple coats of Microsol. The kit decals (slime lights and walkway markings) also silvered a bit.

And on the subject of walkways, on my 72nd model of this subject (see start of this thread) I used the dark grey/light grey walkways but on examining a pic of the real aircraft it seemed to have just black outlines. I posted elsewhere on britmodeller a question about this and the replies suggested it could be either style so I went with the black outlines. Sod's law will now dictate someone will prove me wrong but the decals are done.

Another coat of Klear was added (which was nearly a disaster, but I think I got away with it) so this is the current state of the build, though I'm nowhere near the end yet.